How music makes us feel

Last night's imagine on BBC1 explored 'How Music Makes Us Feel.' The BBC's publicity for this documentary said:

"Many people turn to music when words are not enough, at funerals and weddings, at times of heartbreak and euphoria. It seems to hold more emotion and go deeper than words.

Musicians as varied as Emeli Sande, who enthralled the world when she sang at the Olympics, opera diva Jessye Norman, dubstep artist Mala and modern classical composer George Benjamin explain how music makes them feel. Alan Yentob also talks to a vicar, a psychologist, a Hollywood composer, an adman and even the people who choose the music played in shopping malls. He sees babies dance to a rhythm, and old people brought forth out of silence by the power of music."

The vicar interviewed for the programme is the Revd. Lucy Winkett, Rector of St James Piccadilly, who has published an interesting book called Our sound is our wound in which she explores how we listen for the voice of God within the soundscapes of our lives and how we find our own voice? Our lives are lived, she suggests,  against the backdrop of an internal and external soundscape. The sounds, noises and music with which we are surrounded in modern life have spiritual implications. There is also a soundtrack within us that plays constantly through memory, dreams, anxiety or thought.

The sense of music providing a soundscape throughout our lives also featured in the programme framed as it was by film of babies responding to music at its beginning and dementia sufferers helped through music therapy at its close.

Many of the issues raised by the programme are also explored by Peter Banks and I in The Secret Chord. For example, in Chapter 3 'Play vs Plan' we think about music in relation to play theory in child development, while in Chapter 6 'Head vs Heart' we discuss the expressive impact of music including assessing a quote from Stravinsky, also used in the programme, that "music is, by its very nature, essentially powerless to express anything at all."

Clips from the documentary can be viewed here and the whole programme can be seen on i-player by clicking here.

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Emili Sande - Abide With Me.